Dean Koontz - Innocence

As Gwyneth parked at the curb in front of the theater, she said, “They were going to tear it down and build a hospice. But new health-care regulations—they’re a swamp, and every bureaucrat a gator.”

“Seems a strange place for a meeting.”

“They might be watching his house, so I didn’t dare go there.”

“If he’s being watched, maybe they followed him here.”

“When he was young, he had a career in the Marine Corps. He was an intelligence officer. If they tried to tail him, he’d know. He’d have called me to switch the meeting somewhere else.”

We hurried through the snow to the center pair of eight doors, which she knew would have been unlocked for this rendezvous. The lobby smelled of mold and stale urine and rancid popcorn oil so ancient that cockroaches would decline to feed upon it.

In the beam of Gwyneth’s flashlight, the golden-marble floor, inlaid with patterns of Egyptian hieroglyphics in black granite, was cracked and filthy. We might have been archaeologists who’d dug into a tomb long buried under desert sand, where the body of a pharaoh, well-cured in tannin and wrapped in linen, waited for Anubis to send its spirit back from the House of the Dead.

Debris crunched under our feet as we crossed that enormous dark chamber toward an open door in one corner, where milky light spilled across the threshold. Back in the days of newsreels, comedy shorts, and double features, this might have been the manager’s office; but now it lay barren and deserted except for Teague Hanlon.

I entered that chamber with the protection of my gloves, hood, and ski mask. I bowed my head, and I intended to keep it that way, but the girl’s guardian had another idea.

Mr. Hanlon’s voice—gentle yet firm, clear and almost musical but not unserious—reminded me in some ways of Father’s voice, which disposed me to like him. “Addison, I know you have issues, I am not to look at you under any circumstances, and I respect that. I’ve long been accustomed to Gwynie’s rules, and I’m sure she’s told you that I honor them. I won’t look at you, not even sideways. All right?”

“Yes. All right.”

“Gwynie has told me what I may say to you and what she prefers that I not say, and I will abide by her request. But I feel that you should know what I look like, know at least that much of who I am. It’s going to be essential that you trust me in the hours to come. Trust will be easier for you if you look at me and see no deception. From this moment on, I’ll focus my attention only on dear Gwynie.”

Warily, I raised my stare from his zippered boots to his black slacks, to his long overcoat, which was buttoned at his throat, a white scarf partly revealed beneath it. In one gloved hand, he held a navy-blue knitted sailor’s cap.

Gwyneth said, “Telford won’t say it directly on the phone, only imply it, but Simon… they killed him.”

“God be with him,” Mr. Hanlon said. “He didn’t have an easy life, and now a hard death.”

His head was somewhat large at the brow, his chin and jaw a bit small, like a pear standing on its stem. In spite of the slightly odd proportions, his pleasant face served as a recommendation. White thinning hair, disarranged when he pulled off his cap, was tangled and standing up in wispy twists like a fledgling’s feathers. For a man his age, his brow remained remarkably smooth, and a spray of creases at the corner of each eye seemed not to signify a life of much squinting in disapproval, but one of much laughter.

To Gwyneth, her guardian said, “It’s harder every day to hold him off. He wants the larger part of the principal in the primary trust, for his pet projects, and he thinks there has to be a way around the trust provisions. I tell him it’s all yours until you’ve died, but his mind is a riot of schemes, which he keeps pressing on me. He comprehends your legal protections, but he doesn’t respect them. He keeps saying that your father provided for you too lavishly, and even suggests that the fortune wasn’t fairly earned, which is a slander at the very least, as anyone who knew your dad can attest.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Gwyneth said. “I’d give it all to him tomorrow if by giving it I could… change things. You know it doesn’t matter anymore.”

Mr. Hanlon’s sweet face hadn’t been made for anger. But his pleasant features conformed to a solemn sadness that frightened me. Based on what the girl had just said and on her guardian’s grave expression, I thought she must be afflicted not just with social phobia, but also with something worse, an incurable illness without visible symptoms.

He said, “Gwynie, are you still sure that now is the time?”

“Aren’t you?” she asked.

After a hesitation, he nodded. “Yes. I’m afraid that I think you’re right.”

“The fact that you called me today with this information, that it has at last come into my hands—it’s confirmation.”

From a coat pocket, Mr. Hanlon withdrew a key on a stretchy green plastic coil. He gave it to Gwyneth. “There are two in his retinue who know precisely what he is. His secretary is one of them. He has a room at the back of the first floor, but he won’t participate.”

“He doesn’t need to. He’s done enough.”

I wondered whom they were talking about, but I didn’t feel that it was my place to ask. If I needed to know, she would tell me.

Mr. Hanlon said, “The security system is armed. The audio function has been disabled, so the alarm won’t sound in the house, and the keypad won’t emit tones when you enter the disarming code.”

Gwyneth accepted from him a piece of paper on which were printed four numbers and a symbol.

“Although no siren will sound in the house, a signal will be sent to the security company’s monitoring station. You have just one minute to enter the numbers and the star key in order to prevent an armed response from them.”

Although I was accustomed to going into locked places where I wasn’t supposed to venture, I never did so with the intention of committing a crime. Listening to Mr. Hanlon, I grew uneasy, though I had to assume that Gwyneth likewise harbored no criminal intent. I loved her with such devotion that I could not do otherwise than trust her. In mere hours, trust had ceased to be a choice and had become, with love, the foundation of all my hopes for the future.

Mr. Hanlon said, “His private apartment occupies the entire third floor. You’ll find what you need in the living room. He usually takes a tablet of Lunesta before bed. He should be sound asleep, down a long hallway, in his bedroom. If you’re reasonably quiet, he won’t know you’re there.”

Sensing that the meeting had reached an end, I looked down at the floor, worried that Mr. Hanlon would forget his promise to me and would turn to say good-bye, quite naturally looking straight into my eyes.

Perhaps I needn’t have been concerned. He said, “Addison, you take care of this girl.”

“I’ll do my best, sir. But I suspect she’ll end up taking care of me.”

I could hear his smile in his words. “You’re probably right. Our Gwynie is a force of nature.” He said to her, “I’ll see you in a little while?”

“That’s the plan.”

“You’re really sure you must do this?”

“Very sure.”

“May God be with you, child.”

“And with you.”

Mr. Hanlon accompanied us across the lobby, where we trod upon the hieroglyphics, which included silhouettes and symbols of some Egyptian gods: Osiris, Horus, Isis, Neph, Amen-Ra, Anubis. He let us out, and as we hurried to the Land Rover, he locked the theater doors.

By the time Gwyneth started the engine and switched on the headlights, her guardian was nearing the end of the block, shoulders hunched and head lowered into the wind.